Everyone comes out as a fresh-faced college graduate. Differentiate yourself with your side projects. It's good for your skills and it's great on your resume.
I think it's reasonable to expect that graduates have a significant number side projects by the time they exit. Anything less seems indicative of a lack of interest.
I can imagine many scenarios where someone wouldn't have a plethora of published side projects coming out of school.
It seems absurd that someone could intend to seek employment in this industry (and likely spend 4 years studying it and it's related fields) without producing anything real.
The number of people in my CS degree that couldn't program - at all - was astounding. I did a final year subject on databases, and ended up in an end of semester group project with two students that didn't know the difference between a table, and a database.
If one has open-source projects, great. If not that doesn't even come close to excluding them.
On the visa side of things- it can be difficult. While it isn't actually that difficult to sponsor someone for a visa, it does involve more work than hiring a 'normal' employee, and if a company hasn't done it before they may be reluctant to.
My recommendation is to take a job with a larger company to start with. Get the visa that will allow you to be in the US. Network, prove yourself in that environment, then transfer your visa to a smaller startup.